Camping on The New River, Blacksburg VA

Stayed at this campground in our RV from July 30 to July 6 of this year. First the positive - The location is great with a great view of the river and surrounding mountains. It would be especially beautiful in the fall when the leaves are changing.

Floating the river is peaceful and relaxing and as long as you are using your own flotation devices you can float along the entire property for free. You only have to pay if you want to go further down river and need the shuttle for a ride back. It was quiet at night except for the trains which will be covered later. RV sites are not huge, but they are large enough where you have a little room to yourself and most of them back up to the river. Bonus while we were there was a jet fighter screaming down the river between the mountains and passing right overhead!

Negatives - Family owned since 1982 and that was apparently the last time anything was updated. The place is run down, poorly maintained and the bathrooms are dirty and not cleaned routinely. There is only one functioning bathroom for each sex on site and you cannot use it if someone is taking a shower. There were a couple of porta potties in the RV area, but they were overly full and smelled bad. The power grid is not adequate to handle the weekends when the campground RV sites are full. Our power was fine during the week but come Friday when everyone arrived our Hughes Watchdog was constantly tripping off due to widely fluctuating power. The owner basically said it was our fault, although he did offer to let us move to a 50 amp site, but since we were leaving Sunday we just decided to ride it out. The owner, Jake is rude and obnoxious and is very discourteous to his guests. He apparently inherited the place as he has no management skills to have earned it without family connections. His stated reason for being rude to me was that we had supposedly been rude to the shuttle driver, but he would never say what we said to her that was rude. We only recall having a nice conversation with her as she told us about growing up in the area and swimming in the same river swimming holes as her father and grandfather which we thought was very neat. The only negative thing we said at all was after she asked our opinion of the campground, and we said the bathrooms were dirty and not cleaned properly. I guess that stating the truth is considered rude by the owner. There are also train tracks across the river and also next to the campground and trains do pass by often, but we did not consider that to be a big deal.

We would have rated this campground a 3, but due to the rude owner we lowered it to a 2. If you don't mind staying at a shabby little tubing campground with a rude owner, then this is the place for you!